The rain hadn't stopped. It never did.
It felt thinner this time—less like weather, more like static bleeding through reality.
Each drop that hit my coat stung faintly, leaving behind a residue of cold that never faded. I wasn't sure if it was the same rain as before, or if each loop had rewritten it, molecule by molecule, until even the air became something unfamiliar.
We were heading back to the forest now. Back to the old tower—the supposed last core.
The second core had been neutralized minutes ago, but instead of relief, the air carried an awful heaviness, as if the world was holding its breath.
"Let's move," Silva ordered softly, voice steady but distant. The mud sucked at her boots, echoing faintly in the silence. "The storm's worsening."
Theo adjusted his pack with a grunt. "Feels like it's been worsening for years."
"Maybe it has," Mira muttered, kicking a stray rock that vanished into the underbrush. Her voice trembled despite the attempt at sarcasm.
I trailed behind, slower than the rest. Every few steps, the world flickered—not in sight, but in memory.
A flash of the same road, but under a red light. The same trees, but dead. Mira laughing, then crying. Silva's face… younger.
And then, just as suddenly, I was back here again, soaked, dizzy, trying to remember which version of the night was real.
'I cant remember them but i can... feel them, atleast. Two hundred and forty loops... give or take.'
The number had long lost meaning. Time wasn't linear anymore; it was a spiral closing in on itself.
---
The forest loomed ahead like a living thing—branches tangled like veins, trunks split open like old wounds.
The radio tower's shadow should have been visible from here, rising over the canopy. But this time, it wasn't. Just fog. Endless, moving fog that pulsed faintly, like breath.
Mira was the first to notice.
"Where's the tower?" she asked, voice hushed. "It should be right there."
Silva squinted through the mist. "It's cloaking itself again."
Theo frowned. "Didn't we destroy that ability when we took out the second core?"
"We disrupted it," Silva corrected, scanning the treeline. "Not destroyed. The anomaly adapts faster now."
I blinked hard, my vision blurring. For a moment, Silva's figure split into two, offset versions of herself—one walking ahead, one still beside me. When I blinked again, only one remained.
I stumbled slightly. Mira caught it. "You okay?"
"I'm fine," I lied.
But my head felt wrong. Too heavy. Every time I focused on walking, flashes bled through—alternate paths, different versions of us taking different turns.
In one of them, Theo wasn't here. In another, Silva was wasn't.
In a third, I was watching myself from somewhere far above, like I'd become unstuck from my own body.
I bit down hard on my lips, trying to anchor myself. The metallic taste grounded me—for now.
---
We trudged deeper into the woods, the trees closing in tighter the closer we got to the tower's supposed coordinates.
No animals. No wind. Only rain and our footsteps.
Even the usual hum of the anomaly—the faint vibration that haunted the air—had gone quiet, which somehow made it worse.
"Chief," Theo broke the silence, "you ever wonder if this forest is even real anymore?"
"uh... What do you mean?" Silva asked, not looking back.
Theo hesitated. "I mean… what if it's been replaced, like… rewritten by the anomaly? Like, it's not even the same terrain, just a reconstruction."
Silva didn't respond at first. Her flashlight beam danced ahead, slicing through the fog.
"Does it matter?" she said finally. "Real or not, we still have to finish what we started."
Mira exhaled sharply. "Yeah, but if it's rewriting the area each loop, that means the path might never be the same. We might not even be heading in the right direction."
I opened my mouth to speak, but the words warped halfway out of me.
"There's—another path," I heard myself say, but the voice didn't sound like mine. It sounded layered—my tone overlapping on itself... Maybe one of the other Yuwons. The ones that didn't make it.
They all turned to me.
"What path?" Silva asked cautiously.
I pointed weakly to the left, down a narrow incline where the mist grew denser. "It wasn't there before. But now… it is."
Theo squinted. "I don't see anything."
"You will," I muttered. "It's shifting."
As if on cue, the fog stirred—and a faint outline began to emerge.
Wooden posts. A rope fence. A crude sign hanging half-torn, letters almost erased by time.
The path had formed itself out of nowhere, curving down into the dark.
---
We followed the path in silence. The descent was steep, the mud slick beneath our boots.
The deeper we went, the more the air thickened. It smelled of rust, ozone, and something else—old electronics overheating.
Then, faintly, through the static of the rain, came the sound of the anomaly.
[■■■■■■—■■■■■■—■■■■■■■■■]
A faint hum. Like a radio trying to tune into a forgotten frequency.
Theo frowned. "Is that…?"
"The old tower's signal," I said automatically. My voice shook. "We're close."
But as we continued downward, the signal warped. It began to glitch, skipping back and forth like a broken record.
And underneath it—voices.
Our voices.
Fragments of previous loops echoing back at us.
"We searched everything!"
"The anomaly's panicking—cut the power!"
"Yuwon, stay with me!"
"Don't let it reset again!"
Theo froze mid-step. "Those voices... That's us."
"The echoes are converging," Silva muttered grimly. "Each timeline's collapsing into this one."
Mira rubbed her arms. "That means the Anomaly is too weakened to keep its old equations stable."
I swallowed hard, but the world tilted slightly. My vision doubled again. My right hand didn't seem to move in sync with the rest of me.
Then, for a moment, I saw it—another version of us further down the path.
Same team. Same formation. But their faces… blurred. Like overexposed photographs.
And their Yuwon—their me—was dragging his leg, bleeding heavily, eyes hollow.
'They're from another loop,' I realized. 'And they never made it.'
When I blinked again, they were gone.
---
Eventually, the path leveled out, opening into a clearing.
The old radio tower stood there—skeletal and silent, its top half swallowed by fog. The wind tugged at its rusted frame, making the metal groan and bend like something alive. Cables hung loose and swayed, dripping rainwater that hissed as it hit the wet ground.
For a heartbeat, it looked like a monument—something ancient, grieving, waiting for us to fail again.
However, once we approached it, something unexpected happened.
[LE■■E ■■W]
[YO■■RE D■LETIN■ Y■URSE■F]
[YU■■N DO■■ ■■T TH■S ■E ■■E E■D]
[S■■E M■]
[S■■E YO■R■E■F]
[■■AVE]
The world fractured.
Every sound bent inward—the rain, the wind, even my heartbeat—crushed into one deafening tone. The fog rippled outward like liquid glass as something pressed down from above, unseen but impossibly heavy. My skin crawled, my vision went static-white.
And then I understood.
The anomaly wasn't attacking me. It was reacting to me. It demanded my remaining half... as a new core.
The other Yuwon—the one who had stayed behind, who had offered half of his soul to stabilize the loop—wasn't just a memory anymore.
He had been devoured. Absorbed completely.
And now, with the second core gone, that last fragment of him—the missing half of me—was finally collapsing back into the anomaly itself.
My chest seized.
Every thought blurred, every nerve screamed. I could feel something tearing inside my skull, not pain but erasure.
[YUWON]
[STAY]
[BE ONE]
The text burned behind my eyelids, echoing with my own voice.
"The anomaly—" I tried to shout, but it came out as a strangled whisper.
Theo's voice broke through the distortion. "Yuwon! Talk to us—!"
And then the world folded.
I didn't fall. The ground just moved away from me, and I was gone.
The last thing I felt was warmth leaving my body—blood, maybe—and Silva's voice cutting through the storm like glass.
Then, nothing.
---
"—He's breathing," Theo muttered, kneeling beside my newest Subordinate. His fingers were slick with mud and rain. "His pulse is fine, but his body's… cold. Really cold."
"Team Leader," Mira snapped, fear making her voice sharper than usual. "What's happening to him? Tell us what's going on!"
I didn't answer right away. I just stared down at him—at the stillness in his face, the faint red line from my nose to my jaw.
My expression... it must be hollow.
In the silence, Theo's voice broke again, lower this time. "He's not—He's not dying, right?"
I finally exhaled. "No," I said quietly. "Not yet."
Mira frowned, stepping closer. "That doesn't sound reassuring. What do you mean not yet?"
I hesitated. My gloved hands flexed once, then I spoke.
"Yuwon sacrificed himself in the very first loop. That version of him stayed behind… and merged with the anomaly. He made it possible for us to reset time when we failed." my tone stayed level, but the words trembled underneath, like a dam about to break. "He never told you because he didn't want it to matter."
Mira blinked, disbelief flickering in her eyes. "That's—no. That's impossible. If he merged with it, then this—the Yuwon we know—"
"—is what was left," I finished quietly. "Half of him."
Theo's hands curled into fists. "And you knew? All this time, you knew?"
I looked away. The rain hit harder now, smearing mud across all of our boots. "I tried to keep it a secret. For his sake. For the mission's."
No one spoke.
Even the wind seemed to hold back.
Finally, Mira's voice came through, quiet but trembling. "Then why's he like this? Why now?"
I closed my eyes for a moment, then looked down at Yuwon again—pale, still, his lips faintly blue.
"He didn't confirm this but... most likely Because every time we cut a core's source, we're severing another connection the anomaly had to him. He's been holding it together from the inside all this time, but each cut pulls more of his soul apart."
My words fell heavy, deliberate. "My working theory is that the anomaly isn't just using the first Yuwon's soul as its power source. It has turned into him—or what's left of him."
Theo stepped back, his expression twisted with shock. "So when the anomaly attacked him just now…"
"…it was trying to reclaim what belongs to it," Silva said flatly. "The other half."
Mira shook her head slowly, a bitter laugh escaping her lips. "He's been fighting himself this whole time. Every loop, every god damn hour…?"
I didn't respond. I crouched beside Yuwon's still body, brushing a few wet strands of hair away from his face. My voice softened almost to a whisper.
"He knew this would happen eventually. But he didn't stop. Even knowing he might vanish."
For a moment, the team stood in silence—three agents in the rain, their commander kneeling beside the body of a friend who was both alive and gone.
Somewhere in the distance, thunder rolled—low, hollow, endless.
My thoughts drifted like smoke.
'You gave up half your soul to save us. And now the other half is paying the price.'
I clenched my jaw. 'But I won't let your sacrifice be in vain.'
I rose to her feet, rain dripping from my gloves, my face set again into something steely and unreadable.
"Get him back to the car," I said quietly. "It's the safest place while we face the last core."
Theo hesitated. "And if it isn't safe?"
My eyes flicked toward the forest. "Then we finish this for him."